Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  “You’ve been complaining about that suit all along,” Ethan said as he walked up and pulled a gojuice out of his beltpack to hand it to the engineer.

  “We’re only two klick from home,” Sandi said. “We really need to push on.”

  “I’m down to three percent on the batteries and for the last twenty minutes I have been pulling almost three percent per klick.”

  “Do these things have spare batteries?” the captain asked.

  “No. They have a backup power pack that will keep them operating for an hour but he’s already into his,” Tash said. “His actuator cooling system is completely offline.”

  Rene nodded and leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees, while he stared at the ground. “Yah, it’s hot in here,” he managed, rolling his eyes up and looking at Ethan. “I’ve got to lie… down.” Collapsing onto his hands and knees, he rolled over on his back and blew out several long hard breaths of air.

  “How long will it take for his suit to cool enough that he can move?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never seen one overheat like this,” Sandi said, looking around at the trees and shaking her head. “We can wait a few minutes, but we’ve got to keep moving.”

  “I understand that, but if that suit won’t make it back when it’s running that hot, we’ve got no choice but to wait here until he can move,” Ethan said.

  She nodded, stepping away and tapping her earpiece to comm with one of the Windwalkers.

  There’s something else going on here, he realized as he studied her body language while she talked in hushed tones. She’s terrified of something.

  He leaned over Rene. “You just keep breathing, I’ll be right back.”

  The engineer nodded, closing his eyes and laying his head back on the mossy grass. He looked like he was broiling in his suit.

  The rest of his crew stood back, watching. Making significant eye contact with Nuko he said, “Keep him company. I don’t want him passing out. Talk to him or whatever, but if he passes out we’ll have to get him out of that suit.”

  She nodded and went over to kneel beside the engineer.

  “Angel, how’s your suit charge doing?” He walked over to where she stood with Marti.

  She flipped open her arm control panel. “Sixty percent. I can carry him if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He nodded.

  “Captain, I believe we have an additional problem,” Marti said.

  “I thought something else was stinking out here. What else?”

  “I have maintained control over the microdrones and although they were not designed for long duration flight, several of them are still operational. I have been using them to enhance my situational awareness while we have traveled.”

  “And?”

  “I believe we are being observed,” Marti said.

  “Where,” he said, spinning and trying to pick anything out of the jungle.

  “Several wakat have been pacing us for at least the last hour. They are keeping a distance of approximately 150 meters and remain high in the trees.”

  “Are they the feral ones?” Angel asked.

  “I do not believe so,” it said. “Although my optical resolution is severely degraded because of the attrition of the microdrone swarm, I can tell that at least one of them is wearing the carrying pouch that indicates domestication.”

  “Do Sandi and Tash know about them?”

  “Yes,” it said, looking down in almost an embarrassed expression. “I have also been eavesdropping on the radio communication between the Windwalkers and our guides. The escorts have been unable to run the wakat off and are concerned that there may be an Ut’aran hunting party tracking us.”

  “Frak, then we need to get Rene up and moving,” Ethan said.

  “We should dump all of his exoshell but the arms and back panel so it will stretch his power supply,” Angel said. “If he can hold on to my back and let his legs hang, it will make him easier to carry. I think I can jog the two klicks that way.”

  “Do it,” he said. “Marti give her a hand.”

  As the two of them headed over to help unsuit Rene, he angled for Sandi. She was still talking on her comm.

  “We’ll be ready to move in a couple minutes,” he said when she glanced at him. “But we need to have an understanding first.”

  “Excuse me?” she asked startled at the tone he had taken.

  “Yes. You put me and my people in danger by not sharing that we’ve got wakats following us,” he said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “We’ve got a walking, talking, sensor kit with us.” He jerked his head toward where Marti and Angel were ripping pieces off Rene’s suit and tossing them into a pile. “I also know those are domesticated wakat and your Windwalkers don’t intimidate them, so you all think there’s a hunting party out there tracking us.”

  Holding up a finger she tapped her earpiece. “Iz, can you come here a second, I think you need to talk to Walker with me.” She nodded as he replied.

  Above them, something chittered in the tree and Ethan glanced up. Fifty meters above him, a wakat flashed between two treetops and vanished off into the distance. Immediately behind it, he saw one of their escorts swinging down toward the ground.

  “That bastard was right on top of you,” he said, as he landed softly several meters away. “Fortunately, they don’t like company.”

  “Walker knows about the wakats,” she said. “And that they’re not the feral ones.”

  “He does? Alright then,” Iz said. “Care to tell me how you figured that out?”

  “Marti’s still running the microdrones,” he said. He chose not to mention that it had also been monitoring the comm.

  “Never thought about that,” he said, nodding slowly. “Smart robot. Wondered why you brought it along.”

  “Marti’s a level twelve AA aboard my ship. This body’s only an automech.”

  “So, it’s on an uplink,” Iz said. “Nice tech.”

  “What I want to say here is that you should have informed us about what’s going on,” Ethan said. “By keeping it to yourselves you’re risking my people’s lives.”

  “Look, Walker, you don’t know this environment. That means anything you might try to do to help, might be harder to undo than if you did nothing,” he said. “Nothing personal, but you’re not qualified to help make decisions, so there’s no real upside to us telling you frakking shit.”

  “I’m not sure it’s worth wasting time arguing with you, but if you’d told us we were being followed we wouldn’t have wasted time deciding to unsuit and carry Rene, we’d already be moving again. Right there is one reason that proves your thinking is foobed.”

  The Windwalker sucked his lips tight against his teeth and nodded.

  “Now you want to tell me what else you know?”

  “Not much,” he said. “There are six or eight wakat following us—”

  “There are eleven of them,” Marti said. “Six males and five females. All of them are carrying pouches and three of the larger males also have packs.”

  “We haven’t seen any with packs,” Iz said, glancing at Sandi.

  “That’s not good,” she said quietly.

  “And that’s why we should be sharing intel,” Ethan said.

  “We’re ready to go,” Angel said as she swung Rene up onto her back. She settled him into position and headed off along the trail toward the Rockpile, gaining speed until she reached a steady loping gallop.

  “Wait! We can’t leave the pieces of his exoshell out here,” Sandi said. “If the Ut’arans find them, the contamination will be catastrophic.”

  Tash was scooping up the pieces and handing them to Marti.

  “If you want to carry them back that’s fine, but I think it’s a little late to be worrying about that,” the captain said as he reached into his beltpack and pulled out a piece of stunner pellet casing.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Something we found next t
o the body back there,” he said, dropping the fragment into her hand. “It’s a ceramic piece from a stunner pellet shell. Unless the natives have learned to build stun-guns, I think you have a lot bigger problem than a pile of PSE pieces.”

  Her mouth fell open as she looked at the shard.

  Iz took it from her and nodded. He obviously recognized it. He also didn’t look surprised. “If he died before he woke up, there’s no contamination. This is bad, but it doesn’t mean they’ve been exposed yet.”

  “Except that there was another person there when they were attacked,” Ethan said. “There were several more pellet casings on the opposite side of the ring. Whoever that one was, walked away.”

  “Captain, we need to be moving,” Marti said. “There are several larger creatures approaching along the trail behind us. I do not have adequate resolution in the remaining microdrones to determine exactly what they are, but they appear to be upright, bipedal creatures at least twice the size of the wakat.”

  “How far off are they?” Ethan asked.

  “Just over four kilometers,” it said. “ETA under seven minutes.”

  “Let’s go,” Sandi said, leaping over to help Tash gather what she could of Rene’s exoshell. “Grab what we can carry and leave the rest. We’ll try to come back for it later.”

  “You can’t leave anything out here,” Iz said, looking shocked she’d even consider it.

  “Then you pick it up,” she snapped. “I’m with the captain here. I think letting them catch us would be worse than leaving scraps behind.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “They’re done in the cargo container and they moved the two guards outside the airlock to the station end of the box,” Quinn said, bringing in a small tray of food and setting it down on the counter in the MedBay. “They’ve got four standing watch out there now, and two of them are probably from the planet.”

  “So, they’re determined not to let us out,” Ammo said as she appeared at the door. She’d lost the corset but still looked almost naked in her flesh colored thinskin.

  “Hopefully, I’ve got enough data to figure this out,” Kaycee said.

  “Well you know that Tiny isn’t human,” she said. “What else do we need to know?” She took a seat on the edge of the diagnostic bed and grabbed a grilled yeastcake off the tray. It had bacon and slices of bright red and green vegetables stuffed inside it.

  “It would be good to figure out what they’re physical capacities are, in case things get ugly,” Quinn said. “All we know is that they’re strong as a horse with an eating disorder.”

  “What?” Ammo asked, raising an eyebrow at his metaphor.

  He grinned. “We rescued a Haflinger on the farm when I was a little, and that horse would push over fences, and walls, and even beat down the barn door, to get to the hay bales. When he was hungry, there was no power on Earth that would hold him back,” he said. “Vet said it was an eating disorder, but all I know is when something was between him and dinner, he was the strongest animal I’d ever seen.”

  “I’ve seen pictures of horses,” she said, shrugging.

  “I don’t think the Ut’aran is that strong, but he has at least four times the bone and muscle density of a human, and a spinal column that looks like it is designed for heavy work,” she said. “They’ve also got a circulatory system that’s at least double ours.”

  “It’s a good thing that we didn’t dance then,” Ammo said.

  “His spine has only twenty-seven vertebral bones, so we have an advantage in flexibility, but he’d be a lot to handle if you couldn’t get away from him.”

  “That’s useful to know,” Quinn said. He held out a sandwich to Kaycee and she smiled as she took a bite.

  “His lungs look like they have at least twenty five percent more capacity too, so he has a lot better endurance than you’d expect.”

  “You’re saying it wouldn’t be a fair fight,” Ammo said.

  “Leverage and maneuverability,” the handler said.

  She nodded. “I also think his eyes are a lot better than ours. The scan wasn’t deep enough to know for sure, but there is an extra lens inside the eyeball that might be a light gathering structure. I’d have to get one on a table to do more than venture a guess, but I bet he can see in near total dark too.”

  “You’re saying they look like us, but they aren’t even close,” he said.

  “If he’s typical, then they’re only cosmetically similar.” She leaned back and stretched. “Even a basic bioscan would catch most of this, but at a cellular level it’s much more obvious.”

  “That brings us to the next question,” Ammo said.

  “Why are they on the station if they’re a protected sibling culture?”

  “That too maybe,” Ammo said, “but I was thinking about the implant.”

  “I don’t know,” Kaycee said. “There are several pieces to it, but the biggest one is on the back of his skull. Then there is another one in a position on his spine near what would be the human equivalent of the C-2 vertebra. Without having the specifications on the implant hardware, it would be almost impossible to guess.”

  “They used to use implants for comm before there was all that backlash after the Odysseus Coup,” she suggested. “Maybe that’s what it’s for?”

  “If it’s an Alphatron Inbit 3650, with the right modules they could use it for all kinds of things,” Quinn said. “They were part of the rehabilitation training process at Upstate Supermax.”

  “Training?”

  “They can be used to upload knowledge and skills directly to the brain,” he said.

  “That’s pretty old tech too,” Ammo said.

  “That’s probably true, but they also were experimenting with ways to overwrite violent personality disorders and replace it with a more socially acceptable personality.”

  “I thought that was against the law,” she said.

  “They had all kinds of legal armor around the project, and they told us that the prisoners in the program were all volunteers,” he said. “I don’t know if that was true since some of them didn’t seem too willing to participate. They only implanted the worst hard cases, but that’s part of why I got out of there once my contract was up.”

  “Some of the prisoners were forced against their will?” Kaycee asked.

  “I know a lot of them fought it,” he said. “They might have volunteered and then gotten chicken legs.”

  “Can a determined patient overpower one of these implants?” The edge of an idea was forming in her brain, but it wasn’t clear enough to be sure she liked where it was going.

  “There were some that tried at first. Eventually they learned to cooperate,” he said, his eyes going empty as he thought back over the memories. It was a scary look on his face. He set his sandwich back down on the tray. “An AIT can inflict a lot of pain through the nervous system. If it’s cranked up to an extreme level it will burn through the nerves and paralyze.”

  “Is that permanent?” Ammo asked.

  “Surgery could fix it,” he said. “But it depended on where on the spine the implant was. If it interrupted above a certain point, it shut off control of the diaphragm and the prisoner suffocated unless they got them into a MedBay and on life support immediately. Sometimes it caused brain damage too.”

  “Holy frak,” she whispered. “They’re still using this technology?”

  “As of five or six years ago the program was still ongoing,” he said. “I didn’t think it was something Momma would have approved of, and that’s why I moved on as soon as I could.”

  “You said they could overwrite a person’s personality?” Kaycee asked. “Was that a permanent change?”

  “Not unless they did a BES before they did the implant,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what it did, but it basically erased the mind and then when they overwrote things, they could fill in the blanks. Without the BES they had a lot of trouble getting the prisoners to stay fixed.”

  “A BES is a Brain Engram
Scan,” she said for Ammo’s benefit. “What happened if they didn’t do a BES?”

  “Depends on how hard they pushed back,” he said. “The pain induction tended to make the prisoner want to behave, but even without it the implant could keep reloading new core behaviors or skill patterns and they went a bit... spastic, maybe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like they were arguing with themselves all the time. Unpredictably.” He shrugged. “When you dealt with one that hadn’t had the BES wipe first, it was like you never knew if you were talking to the hardcase or the implant.”

  “Really?” she asked, suddenly understanding what she was looking for. “I assume the implant had a preprogrammed behavior for the patient?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “They were comm enabled and the main AA could update it any time it needed to.”

  Kaycee slapped her palm down on the counter beside her and grinned. “Dr. Forrester has an implant.”

  “Why would he have one?” Ammo shook her head. “He’s the one putting them into the natives.”

  “And who did it to him?” “Quinn asked.

  “Those are all good questions,” she said. “Maybe we should ask him.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” he asked. “They’ve got us locked down and sure as frak won’t let us talk to him.”

  “And won’t his transducer just override him as soon as you ask about it?” Ammo said.

  “We get Dr. Forrester to come in here instead,” Kaycee said.

  “That still doesn’t keep his transducer from cutting him off,” she said.

  The handler grinned. “Leave that to me.”

  “I understand the need for discretion given your findings, but should I relay this information to the captain?” Marti said.

  Quinn and Ammo both nodded.

  “Can you do it without being overheard?” she asked. “Until we interrogate the doctor, we don’t know who’s in on this.”

  “There is an RF shielded utility area in the basecamp where I have been recharging. With the door closed there would be no potential for them to intercept or overhear. I would be disconnected from my automech, but I could download a report and preprogram my body to deliver it to him once we were alone.”